Low health-related quality of life among abused women

Abstract

In a cross-sectional study, we sent a self-administered questionnaire to all the women's shelters in Norway to describe health-related quality of life among women who had experienced violence from an intimate partner. Every woman who could understand Norwegian and was staying at a women's shelter in Norway for more than 1 week from October 2002 to May 2003 was asked to participate. We described violence by intimate partners by using the Severity of Violence against Women Scale and the Psychological Maltreatment of Women Index. We used the SF-36 Health Survey to measure health-related quality of life. These women experienced a multitude of threats and actual physical and psychological violence during their partnership. Their health-related quality of life was low and significantly (p<0.001) below the norm for the female population of Norway in all dimensions. The SF-36 mental health dimension was 2.5 standard deviations below the norm. Women at women's shelters in Norway who had experienced domestic violence had very low and clinically significantly reduced health-related quality of life scores. Health care workers must give priority to developing intervention plans for victims of violence from intimate partners.

Health-Related Quality of Life Among Abused Women One Year After Leaving a Violent Partner

“…Two studies show impaired QOL among women exposed to intimate partner violence (Bonomi et al 2006;Laffaye et al 2003), and the measure seems to be good indicator of the life situation of abused women. In our baseline study, a crosssectional study among all the women's shelters in Norway (Alsaker et al 2006b), we found health-related QOL (HRQOL) very low and below (P \ 0.001) the norm for the female population in Norway in all dimensions. The very low scores can have a cultural impact as the individual's thoughts and feelings with reference to herself as abused may make her feel even more left out alone in a society where equality between men and women tends to be more common, as in Norway (Carr et al 2001).…”

“…The baseline study found clinically significantly low scores in both the SF-36 and the WHOQOL-BREF (Alsaker et al 2006b). The significant changes in the follow-up study in mental health, vitality and social functioning in the SF-36 one-year after arriving at a women's shelter show that leaving their abusive partner improved these women's quality of life.…”

Quality of life of mothers whose children work on the streets of São Paulo, Brazil

“…Moreover, studies in populations other than that of mothers, namely women with a self-reported history of abuse or who are currently abused by their partners, provide evidence for an association between such factors and lower levels of quality of life 36,37,38 .…”

Asociación entre violencia contra la mujer ejercida por la pareja y desnutrición crónica en sus hijos menores de cinco años en Perú

“…La violencia contra la mujer puede influenciar en el estado nutricional de sus hijos a través de factores tanto biológicos, conductuales, sociales y/o contextuales (5) . Las personas que sufren de algún tipo de violencia, ya sea física o emocional, son más propensas a sufrir de algún desorden o enfermedad mental (6)(7)(8) , tienen peores índices de calidad de vida y una pobre sensación de bienestar de salud general (9) , lo cual puede afectar negativamente tanto la crianza, como el estado nutricional de la madre y el niño. Además, existe evidencia de que los hijos de mujeres que experimentan episodios de violencia doméstica presentan bajo peso al nacer y parto pretérmino (10)(11)(12)(13) , lo cual, a su vez, se ha visto relacionado con problemas nutricionales en los primeros años de vida (14) .…”